Have bat (or glove, or arm), will travel

As the dog days of summer approach, a lighter bit of trivia for you. No heavy analysis here, just some idle fun with the Play Index.

Johnny Damon signed on with the Indians earlier this season. Cleveland is Damon’s 7th club, and 4th in 4 seasons. What you might not be aware of is this: Damon leads in games played for all players who have played for exactly 7 clubs.

Another active player close to the top of his list is Omar Vizquel, now with his 6th team. Omar needs another 33 games (possible, but unlikely) to move past Dave Winfield for the most games played for players appearing for exactly 6 franchises.

After the jump, I’ll take a look at other weary travelers.

Here’s the list, showing the top 3 in games played, for each number of franchises played for.

Unsurprisingly, the number of games at the top of each list generally decreases with number of teams played for. The big exception is Rickey Henderson with over 3000 games for 9 franchises (almost 900 games more than Ruben Sierra, next on that list). Henderson’s itinerary included four different stints with the As and two with the Padres.

Octavio Dotel is now the all-time most-traveled player in major league history. Dotel has appeared with 13 teams in 14 seasons, and 6 clubs in just the past 3 years. Interestingly, Dotel has never had more than one stint with the same franchise.

Leading the small group at 12 franchises is Matt Stairs who, like Dotel, did not have multiple stints with the same franchise – not, that is, until finishing up with the Nationals after starting his career with Montreal.

In terms of teammates, Ron Villone with his 12th franchise and Julian Tavares with his 11th, both played on the 2009 Nationals. Also in 2009, Matt Stairs and catcher Paul Bako each played for their 11th franchise with the Phillies. Conversely, here are the top 5 in terms of most career games played by teammates who each played only for one team, at the time when they were last teammates.

On this list, Dana Eveland (no. 19) and Bruce Chen (no. 27) look poised to move into the top spot when they join their next teams. And, in this day and age of free agency with over half of major league rosters turning over every year, that may not take long to happen.

Following up on the free agency thought, here are the most traveled players up to 1974.

So, even without free agency, there were still players who moved around a lot. Of this group, Bobo Newsom probably packed his suitcase most often as Newsom had multiple stints with several of his 9 teams, including the Senators (5 times), Browns (3), Robins/Dodgers (2), and Athletics (2). Newsom’s long travels finally paid off in a WS championship at age 40 with the 1947 Yankees (Newsom almost won a WS championship as the ace of the 1940 Tigers staff, bidding for his 3rd CG victory of the series but falling 2-1 in game 7 to Paul Derringer and the Reds).

Seeing Steve Finley’s teams played for on the first list reminds me of an interesting quirk to his career…. he played for SIX different teams in the NL West. That includes all five current NL West teams as well as the Astros during their last few years in the old NL West. I’d have to think that is the most franchises any player has played for within the same division under the same name…

Just for fun I checked out players who have played for all four current AL West teams, and surprisingly found only two: Mark McLemore and Gene Nelson. McLemore wins by virtue of having the foresight to also play for the Astros, who will of course be joining the AL West next year.

Just taking a quick glance at the lists in the post, Tommy Davis managed to play for 5 of the 6 original AL West teams (missed only the Twins), despite having only 3 full seasons and parts of 2 others in that division.

Alex Trevino played for 5 of the 6 original NL West teams, missing only the Padres.

Rather famously, Dave Kingman played for all four divisions in the same season: in 1977 he went from the Mets to the Padres to the Angels to the Yankees.

Another Met, Joel Youngblood, went him one better by getting hits for two different franchises on the same day, in two different cities: in 1982 he was pulled out of a road game at Wrigley after singling, then put on a plane and shipped off to Philly, where he became an Expo in time to have a pinch-hit single.

Odd trades are nothing new for the Mets, however, who once traded C Harry Chiti to Cleveland… for himself.

The other sidebar to the Youngblood story is both of his hits that day were off future HOF pitchers – Jenkins and Carlton.

I recall watching that Expos/Phils game on TV and Youngblood didn’t make it into the dugout until the 6th inning, and then was immediately inserted into the game. Made me wonder then (and now) what would have possessed the Expos to write his name on the lineup card, just on the chance he would be ready to play. Whatever it was, Montreal was definitely high on Youngblood as the player he replaced (Jerry White) started only three more games the rest of the season.

Nightfly: There’s actually an interesting Kingman/Youngblood link. On the same day they traded away Tom Seaver, the Mets made two other trades…one sending Kingman to the Padres, the other acquiring Youngblood from the Cardinals. Interestingly, one of the players acquired in the Kingman trade was none other than Bobby Valentine. And, in order to make room on the roster for Youngblood, player-manager Joe Torre retired as an active player.

Nightfly, even worse than trading a player for himself is what happened to the Braves at the end of the 1970 season.

The Cubs picked up Hoyt Wilhelm off waivers from the Braves on Sep 21 when the Braves were out of it and the Cubs were two games back with ten to play. Not sure if the Cubs thought a 48 year-old knuckleballer was what they needed to put them over the top, but it wasn’t as they finished 5 back of the Pirates.

Anyway, in the off-season, Atlanta was keen to get Wilhelm, so much so, that they traded future utilityman Hal Breeden to get Hoyt back. So, the Cubs ended up getting a player for nothing, and the Braves “traded” Wilhelm plus another player for Wilhelm.

Doug – And for their troubles, Wilhelm pitched in 3 more games for the Braves and compiled a 15.43 ERA. Ouch! They released him, the Dodgers picked him up and he had a 1.02 ERA the rest of the year. Double ouch!!!

Dummy Leitner – he of the 5 games with 4 teams – pitched for the 1901 Giants who also had Dummy Taylor and Dummy Deegan (Dummy was a common nickname back then for a deaf person). Taylor spent the whole season with the Giants so he definitely overlapped with the other two but since Leitner and Deegan only pitched a few games, it’s doubtful that all 3 were on the roster at the same time.

It was said that Hoy (the most famous Dummy) insisted on others calling him by that name, viewing it as an endearing rather than a pejorative term. Different times.

For some real off-beat trivia, Hoy is said to be the oldest person to throw out the ceremonial first pitch of a World Series game (or, most likely, any other game), doing so at age 99 in the 1961 series, a couple of months before his death.

Some interesting—to me— points about a couple of players pre-expansion: in the 1950s Dick Littlefield was famous for being traded. He played for nine franchises in a nine year career. He was also involved in some of the blockbuster trades of the decade, such as the one that sent Red Schoendienst from the Cards to the Giants for Al Dark. He was traded by the Giants to the Dodgers with 30 grand for Jackie Robinson, but Robinson retired and voided the deal.

Bobo Newsome was such a good pitcher that teams couldn’t wait to get rid of him: most of the time he was sold for cash and was easily waived out of the league he was in—the only way possible to transfer from one to the other in those days—because nobody wanted him in spite of his obvious talent. The guy was a nutcase.

I love looking at Bobo Newsome’s page. You can’t look at his entire pitching stats without having to scroll down (or shrink your font).

He led the league in losses 4 times. Won 20 games and lost 20 games 3 times each. the 20-game winning seasons all came in a row (1938-40) while he spread the 20 loss seasons over 12 years (1934, 1941, 1945)

Just noticed that Royce Clayton and Kenny Lofton (11 team list) were exact contemporaries and played almost exactly the same number of games. One area where they weren’t alike was post-season – 11 times for Lofton and twice in the WS, but only 3 for Clayton and never in the WS.

In all their travels they ended up in the same place at the same time just once – in 2002 with the White Sox (until Lofton was traded at the deadline).